sábado, 24 de diciembre de 2016

Last semester I got asked about my classes, but now I got asked a little about my classes and a lot about myself. With Brexit, Trump, et cetera, I'm pretty sure we are entering an era where being open about our identity and beliefs is what's gonna define who we are, so here you go. I am an open book:

1. What's it like teaching the same topic a lot of times? Don't you get bored?

It's a little like this:

And no. Every group is different, so no two lessons feel exactly the same.

2. Where are you from?

Sinaloa, land of carne asada, iced tea, and insane breakfasts. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not from Monterrey or Colombia. Here is a map of all the places people have asked me if I'm from:

3. Are you gay?

Yes. This one's easy.

4. Are you an atheist?

Not sure. I think Mexicans are ill-equiped to be atheists, because we grow up invoking God for really mundane stuff ("¡ay Dios mío!"), and we do a lot of really religious things (Día de muertos, Día de reyes, tamales el día de la Candelaria, eating fish or white meat on Christmas, etc) without thinking about it. Do I think God exists? I don't know. Like Laurence Peter said (I'm paraphrasing): some problems are so complex, that you have to be highly intelligent just to be undecided about them.

5. Are you catholic?

Not
sure. I was baptized/confirmed/first communioned and I went to catholic schools from ages 3 to 15, so I'm not uncomfortable in catholic contexts (like going to mass for a wedding or following the rosary in a funeral), but I also haven't been to church on a Sunday since 2012. I guess I'm a
lapsed catholic or an agnostic, if anything. When I studied abroad in Washington, DC, I used to go to an LGBT-friendly catholic mass by a group called Dignity Washington, and I really enjoyed it, but there isn't anything like that in Mexico City. Dante Alighieri thought
people who were undecided about their religion belonged in a special circle in
hell, so you know where to find me if hell turns out to be real. I'll have plenty of vegan snacks and k-pop, it'll be great.

6. Where did you study abroad?

I answered this before, but I guess some people wanted more detail in my response.

In high school, I went to Nice, France. CIV 4ever. The food was good, the museums were awesome, and I snuck out a lot to go thrifting, to the theater, or to museums my classmates weren't interested in (which was most of them). I'm not saying you should do that, sneaking out when you're 16 is a BAD DECISION, but you know. It happens. I also don't have a lot of pictures from this trip, because it happened before selfies were invented and I was alone a lot in high school. My high school experience was similar to "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", but in Culiacán (so a lot more boring), with more musical theater, and without most of the drugs or the serious mental health issues.

In college, I did an intercambio de excelencia in Washington, DC. That basically means you stop sleeping for a semester because you go to school (Georgetown University, in my case) and also do an internship (mine was at the National Defense University). Washington is weird, because most of the people you meet are there temporarily, and it's a small city with a lot of cosmopolitan stuff to do. I highly recommend the chilli bowls, the Ethiopian food, the used bookstores (my favorite is Second Story Books), and the gay churches.

In graduate school, I went to Montevideo, which is why I know Uruguay is a little too calm for my taste. It was winter, and I programmed a lot while wondering what life choices had taken me to a statistics course in freezing weather, in a country where coffee is not easily available. Uruguayans don't drink coffee or tea, and they also dislike partying in the Mexican sense of the word (i.e. they don't dance, talk, or move much), but they do fill up their wine glasses to the brim, have good beer, and eat a lot of meat. Pros and cons, people. Pros and cons.

I also volunteered at Open Books in Chicago (good food and super nice gringos, which is unusual in the U.S.) and did an internship at Yale University (extremely different to what you see on Gilmore Girls) while I was in college. I don't think these count, but my dad says they do because he paid for them. Like RuPaul says: Unless they're paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind. (My dad was paying all my bills, so there you go.)

If you clicked the links with pictures, that's me in Renoir's garden in 2006, me in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2012, me freezing my butt off in Uruguay in July 2015, me melting my butt off in Chicago in July 2012, and me sitting somewhere around Yale (Law School, I think?) in 2013.

7. What's your zodiac sign?

Cancer. My birthday is June 23, same as Edward VIII of the UK (who's watching The Crown?), the Brexit referendum, Zinedine Zidane (more on this below), the Republic of Moldova's declaration of sovereignty, and Joss Whedon.

8. What's your Instagram?

@franciscogrgz. I post a lot of food pictures, selfies, and skulls (apparently).

9. Do you have Snapchat?!

Yes, it's the same username as my Instagram, but I don't really use it.

10. Do you like sports?

Not really. I run and work out, but I find watching and playing team sports really boring. In 2006 I was at a transmission of the final of the FIFA World Cup (France-Italy) in the Paris Stadium, and I was so bored, that I didn't even notice when Zinedine Zidane head-butted the Italian guy. Then Italy won, all the French people were crying (this was in Paris, after all), and I was like "I'M SO BORED, when's dinner?". That night I had pasta for dinner like everybody else, but I'd already forgotten that Italy had won the cup. That's how much I didn't care about the game.

11. Do you like videogames?

I play Age of Empires II, SimCity 4, and sometimes Civilization V (all on Steam), but that's it. I get too competitive, so I'm not really a gamer.

jueves, 1 de diciembre de 2016

If you want to know your grades in the final exam and in the entire class, check your Tec e-mail. I'll be sending you your grades tonight. Remember the revisión is tomorrow, but it is optional. Just to be clear:

The revisión is NOT:

Mandatory for me. I'm obligated to upload a grade for each student 48 hours after the exam itself, but not to be trapped in a classroom for an hour with your graded exams before doing so. I do it because I care about you and about answering your questions, not because I have to.

A negotiation of your grade if you don't like it. Unless you find a mistake I made, your grade is quite final.

An opportunity to artificially raise your grade. This is called corruption, and if you were in my class, you know how I feel about corruption.

Your last chance to show commitment to the class. You're supposed to do that during the semester.

The revisión IS:

For students who have concrete questions about their grades. For example, maybe you're wondering how getting a 65 in the final exam translates into getting an 80 in your final grade, and I'll be happy to show you.

For students who failed the class and want to know what's gonna happen now. I can give you advice and hear you out. Just so you know: it's going to be okay. Failing a class just means you're not ready for the next one, and that's fine. It doesn't mean you're stupid or a bad person, it just means you need to adjust your efforts when you try again next semester. Take this as an opportunity to try harder and as evidence that second (and sometimes third) chances do exist.

A good chance to drop by to say hi to me and wish me a happy winter break. I'm going to Culiacán to visit my grandma and then spending Christmas and New Year's here in CDMX. I also plan on watching a lot of Game of Thrones and rewatching a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race.

miércoles, 30 de noviembre de 2016

If you want to know your grades in the final exam and in the entire class, check your Tec e-mail. Remember the revisión is tomorrow, but it is optional. Just to be clear:

The revisión is NOT:

Mandatory for me. I'm obligated to upload a grade for each student 48 hours after the exam itself, but not to be trapped in a classroom for two hours with your graded exams before doing so. I do it because I care about you and about answering your questions, not because I have to.

A negotiation of your grade if you don't like it. Unless you find a mistake I made, your grade is quite final.

An opportunity to artificially raise your grade. This is called corruption, and I don't stand for it.

Your last chance to show commitment to the class. You're supposed to do that during the semester.

The revisión IS:

For students who have concrete questions about their grades. For example, maybe you're wondering how getting a 65 in the final exam translates into getting an 80 in your final grade, and I'll be happy to show you.

For students who failed the class and want to know what's gonna happen now. I can give you advice and hear you out. Just so you know: it's going to be okay. Failing a class just means you're not ready for the next one, and that's fine. It doesn't mean you're stupid or a bad person, it just means you need to adjust your efforts when you try again next semester. Take this as an opportunity to try harder and as evidence that second (and sometimes third) chances do exist.

A good chance to drop by to say hi to me and wish me a happy winter break. I'm going to Culiacán to visit my grandma and then spending Christmas and New Year's here in CDMX. I also plan on watching a lot of Game of Thrones and rewatching a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race.

An opportunity to chat about next semester and what's to come. 20th century history, here we come!

domingo, 20 de noviembre de 2016

"In December 2015, a student reacted angrily when I wondered if the average social-media-enthralled 17-year-old in 2015 might not possess the reading and writing proficiency of her 1965 counterpart. I was asking students if, as with the Newspeak-besieged citizens of Oceania in 1984, a struggle to unravel and communicate complex ideas could result in the gradual erosion of those ideas themselves. It’s just different now, not worse, the student said. With the bell, 10 minutes later, she breezed toward the door. Over her shoulder, she shouted, sprightly and confident, that classes shouldn’t have to read 1984. It was too long, too confusing, and too full of words no one used anymore. Nothing that has happened in the past 365 days has made me more afraid and emboldened than that."El resto del artículo está aquí. Y a mí me pasó igual con un estudiante que me dijo que un capítulo de 40 páginas era demasiado, porque el semestre pasado apenas podían leer 20 páginas por semana."¿Nunca has leído un libro completo?", pregunté yo."Claro que sí", dijo el estudiante, "pero no les entiendo".Pocas cosas me han llenado más de miedo (y ganas de llenar mis clases de literatura) que esa conversación.

Central Idea:“In order to place effective
checks on these officials [who act as patrons or gatekeepers for corruption in
patrimonial regimes], thereby creating real accountability, there must exist at
the grassroots level an active and enlightened citizenry rather than simply
dependent clients or disempowered individuals” (103).

·“Democratization
is increasingly producing a new type of regime—one in which rulers who
monopolize power and treat the state as their own patrimony are succeeded by
competing political groupings or parties that practice similarly nonuniversal
allocation of public resources based on patronage, nepotism, and the exchange
of favors. (…) Despite the presence of
political pluralism and contested elections in these societies, ethical
universalism fails to take hold as the main rule of the game, and winners
of the political process, in turn, treat the state as the major source of
spoils, feeding off the public resources that they divert toward their clients”
(101). Political competition in itself (maybe also economic competition) does
not in itself solve particularism, patrimonialism or corruption. Competition
does not ensure that a set of rules oriented at maximum social welfare will
exist or even develop.

·“It
seems that ethical universalism becomes an
institution (a widespread norm endorsed by the majority) rather than a mere
ideology of the enlightened when 1) a significant part of society shares the
belief in the superiority of ethical universalism over particularism as a mode
of governance, and 2) enough individuals are also willing to act on this belief
to make it a reality. This does not necessarily require an absolute
majority, but rather a majority of active public opinion, including a fraction
of the elite” (104). Public opinion (defined as that of the media and an active
citizenry) can shape what the rules are when they act as watchdogs and are not
relegated to being clients of the government. Mungiu-Pippidi focuses on what
she considers to be a set of rules called “ethical universalism”, but it may be
more a matter of justice than of ethics, as she also calls it “an optimal
equilibrium that maximizes social welfare” (109).

·Civil society must “have the
permanent capability to exercise normative constraints, and not be forced to
rely solely on the vertical accountability provided by elections” (109) through the extensive use of
civil associations and political participation. In parallel, “the media must be pluralistic and must
carry out their watchdog duties effectively and credibly in order to generate
normative constraints. The media must promote ethical universalism as the
chief principle of governance and denounce governments captured by private
interests” (110). This ensures that there is one set of rules for everyone, and
that the government cannot rely on its authority or clientelistic relationships
with the citizenry or the media to circumvent them.

The “normative
constraints” cited by Mungiu-Pippidi are (103-104):

·Values: “A prevailing social norm of ethical
universalism based on values such as fairness and honesty”

·Civil society: “A dense network of voluntary
associations (including the NGOs in the Western understanding of the term, but
also unions, religious groups, and the like)”

·Civic culture: “Sustained participation and
political engagement of the people, for instance through the media or social
movements”

Mungiu-Pippidi tests her central thesis
empirically and finds a “significant positive relationship between control of
corruption and:

·“the
number of associations (CSOs) per capita that explains 54% of the total
variation, controlling for either human development or GDP per capita”

·“freedom
of the press” (67%), via Freedom House’s index

·“Number
of internet connections” (71%), used as an indicator of individual autonomy and
access to information

·“Protestantism
is the major religious denomination” (61%), which seems to be relevant due to
its “egalitarian ethos, which may have worked indirectly to support a general
orientation toward ethical universalism, literacy, and the promotion of
individualism”.

·Joined
in an OLS regression, these four variables account for “nearly 78% of the
cases” and 84% “when outliers are eliminated” (107).

These percentages refer to how much of the
variation in countries’ measure in the World Bank Institute’s control of
corruption indicator can be traced to these four characteristics, both
individually and as a group.

Mungiu-Pippidi then goes on to explain the
problems faced by external donors when financing anticorruption projects in
developing countries. These are:

·Insufficient
concreteness: “Far too many projects deal with corruption in general, with a
focus on “raising awareness”, while only a handful directly attack corruption
in a specific organization or branch of government” (113).

·Poor
contextualization: “To challenge corruption, one must understand how it works
in a specific environment. Importing anticorruption policies from developed to
less-developed countries, where institutional fit is poor, cannot succeed”
(113).

·Confusion
between civil society’s role as a watchdog over the government and a deliverer
of services for that same government: “If civil society is funded by the
government or asked by its donors to carry out joint programs with the
government that it is supposed to monitor, it risks jeopardizing its critical
oversight role, and a client-patron relationship may emerge instead” (113).

·Lack
of a local focus: “As normative constraints in corrupt societies are more often
exercised against whistleblowers than against corrupt officials, it is
essential that donor groups provide political support and take their cues from
local actors rather than trying themselves to direct the creation of domestic
forces in favor of change” (114).

Regarding a possible concept of corruption as
it relates to particularism and patrimonialism, Mungiu-Pippidi says that “in a society dominated by particularism,
it is more convenient for individuals to try to accede to the privileged group
or to become clients of influential patrons tan to engage in a long-term battle
to change the rule of the game to ethical universalism. In such
societies, there is no tradition of association between equals, since trust is
particularistic and is built on clans, patrons, and clients. Attempts to change
this are bound to have high costs with few immediate returns. Any progress
toward ethical universalism would threaten the existing order, and the
predators and patrons who would fight against such progress are likely to be
greater in number, richer, and better placed in the society than in the new
horizontally structured associations” (109).